Robert Adams Quotes

I didn't take writing seriously at first - I didn't think I could do it. When I did, I fell in love with it. But writing is very lonely.

Being an artist doesn't mean that you're a good artist. That was the bargain I first made with myself: I'd say, I'm an artist, but I'm not really very good.

I don't even know how to sell a piece of artwork of mine because it's so personal.

I do remember when I was starting acting, going from one set to the next, with not much else going on in my life. And at the end of the day, you get back to your hotel room and just feel this awful loneliness, because the cameras have stopped rolling.

I remember, when I was young, to have a literary or artistic vocation was really dramatic because you were so isolated from the common world. You felt that you were marginal, and if you dared to try to organise your life around your vocation, you knew you'd be completely segregated.

The feeling of not belonging, of not being entirely worthy, of being sometimes hostage to your own sensibilities. Those things speak to me very personally.

For the longest time, I didn't even want to admit I was serious about music. Before the Shins, I would tell myself, 'Oh, I'm going to figure something out someday.' I had this romantic vision of being this old dude maybe making guitars or something.

Sometimes I think I'm the craziest person on the planet.

When people are struggling, that's a painful place to be in, to not know who you are and where you belong and what you desire.

Because I was a diminutive, arty kid, I felt like a misfit in high school - but who doesn't?

I'm not looking to be an artist to make money. I'm looking to be an artist.

I don't have any other skills. Some artists say that to mean that their embodied passion for art gave them no choice. I say it, very specifically, to say that I really didn't have any other options.

Like everyone else, I've had moments when I've felt that I've been losing my grip.

This image of wanting to be an artist - that I would in some way become an artist -was very strong. I knew for a long, long time that that's what I would be. But nothing I ever did seemed to bring me any nearer to the condition of being an artist. And I didn't know how to do it.

It's true that there are people who live the idea of being an artist, as opposed to the idea of making art.

I still haven't made a film that defines who I am.

Loneliness and rootlessness are just symptoms of an insecurity that assails us all when hitting this midlife moment. The world appears intent on blanking you out.

Back when I was in college, people used to talk about the alienation of the artist, not ever quite fitting in any place.

If you're an artist, it's OK to put your money into your art. The advantage, in hindsight, is that you become the film, and the film becomes you; you breathe it.

I am isolated as an artist, not as a person.

It's true, most of my days are spent alone in a dark room! I don't really want anyone to see me trying and failing to nail the 40th take of a simple piano cue.

I've always wanted to be a brooding, deep, dark artist, but I can never keep that facade going for more than 15 minutes.

Some days, for some reason, I can't go anywhere, and I'm like, 'That was a mistake,' and other days no one will even notice me.

I was always a wannabe 'singer-songwriter' but nothing was happening. I was trying for albums. I was too afraid to quit my job for nothing. But my friends kept on encouraging me. I kept on writing songs. My first hit was probably my 150th song.

That's the way a musician is. You're isolated, in a weird way, because music is haunting you as much as it's loving you. It's non-stop.